The best epitaph on this lunatic episode:
""They were careless people, Tom and Daisy--they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made..."
Scoff Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this series in the New York Times. US Army Vietnam 1970 -71
4
Easy digest, no-need-to-chew prose, Restful for the brain and conscience. Altogether delightful.
2
And the beat goes on!
1
Gerstel is the Norman Rockwell of prose.
3
This is my first experience of the pleasure of reading
DAVID GERSTEL. His writing is evocative and art of a master, beginning with the title. As an old friend of mine said, “It’s a Kellogg’s and Campbell’s store ..”
“...with stubble that showed the years and the tears of time ..”
Yes indeed, outstanding writing !!
Semper Fi,
Tom Eagen
3
I assume this was meant to be ironic. If so I endorse it. Gerstel's is indeed Kellogs All Bran prose ready made for the Reader's Digest.
1
Unintentinally, this story does sum up the series and explain why America lost this war both militarily and morally and thorougly deserved to. It is all about Americans; there is no word there about the millions of Vietnamese who were slaughtered. The Americans were the victims, the people who had a tragedy and for whom we should shed tears. The Vietnamese are just stacked up "body counts", of less account that piles of wood. That is the American overall attitude to the war. No Vietnamese are commemorated on that Washington monument which seems pretty dull to me. America is not and never was interested in Vietnam as such: it was simply a place for the war fighters to try out their arms and the ability of dollars to bribe people and for the anti-war people a far country to test their passing indignation about. The Vietnamese - the best ones - soon realised Americans did not care about their country and they had nothing to do but to chase them out and unify it. It could not be left divided to suit America's passing whim and the interests of America's friend Red China. No. Good for you, Vietnamese! Here is one North American who does profoundly admire you !
3
Just discovered this series, excited to read the past articles. Thank you to Mr. Gerstel for sharing his story.
1
It's accepted that the Vietnam war Was a horrible mistake for us.
Although I protested against it I don't find blame for everyone involved.
There's a reason the lottery focused on 19-year-olds... they have very little understanding of the world. For me it's been difficult to assess guilt or blame when where you were from and your background had so much to do
with how you saw this conflict. Yes war is wrong and the lesson should've been learned long ago and the lesson is available going back to Greek literature.
Mr. Gerstel is giving of himself and giving us a window into a Vietnam soldier's soul. I am very thankful to him and also to the New York Times for the series.
For the most part I feel good that the comments are respectful to both sides and that finally some bitterness has burned away.
4
On my return trip to SE Asia and Vietnam, I was struck by the general insouciance of the population there to the 20 yr conflict (55-75) and how that bitter conflict between has faded in minds of the people. Ironically, a new conflict with their putative ally at the time and our foe and bogeyman at the same time China, has arisen and now 6,000 US sailors aboard the Carl Vinson visit Vietnam after 30 years.
I am interested in PTSD in relation to former ARVN and PAVN living in Vietnam but found scant literature and a general indifference by PAVN survivors to talk about or acknowledge PTSD although some did open up about their duties and experiences in the war. What stood out most forcefully was the fact that everyone I met had a member of their immediate family either grandfather , grandmother , father, mother or close relative such as aunt or uncle that perished in the war.
Now , in retrospect, I see that regardless of ones allegiance, Vietnam War was a cataclysm for the Vietnamese but not the final verdict. Their indomitable spirit, tenacity and work ethic has propelled them into a future filled with hope as they ply their leaders in the current government to meet their aspirations. I pay my respect to all that perished and wish peace of heart and spirit for all the survivors.
4
Why a cataclysm? That is not how the Americans see the American Civil War, which killed about 700,000 in a 30 million country. But it vindicated the principle of freedom from slavery and the unity of the USA. For these reasons Americans and the world rightly regard the American Civil War as an enormous human truimph. The verdict on the Vietnam War has to be similiar. It vindicated the heroism of a pesant people which was able to withstand all the unprecedented furies unleashed by a superpower which tried to make it submit. Any human who values standing up to a bully must feel exhilarated
and emboldened by the Vietnamese victory. It was far from a tragedy. No war was more worthwhile. Just because your country was sent home defeated does not make the war pointless. General Giap made this point.
2
You will be surprised, perhaps shocked, angry maybe, and perhaps hateful towards me when I say this is a truly evil article. I did not go to this joke of a "war", resisted it's misnamed "draft," and have spent my entire waking life attempting with all my brains, wit, and inspiration to do what I can to prevent a repeat.
We will have these deadly horrible and profoundly immoral experiences until young men don't have pieces like this to read and propel them on the same path to being "proud" of killing innocent children, mothers, and grand patents. If we truly want to be a good society or even a passably acceptably civilized one, we will have to remove the glory and nobility of soldiering.
As long as you too are not submitting comments like this you are an aider and abettor of the murders I describe. You will have done nothing to stop it and maybe are actively encouraging it with words like "thank you for your service." You should at least be saying "I'm sorry for your service. Is there anything I can do to help you?" As I do.
Those helicopters weren't just used to pick up people. They had gunners who emptied their magazines on the way back to base, literally shooting people for sport. Close friends who were trapped into servitude have told me those stories and several far worse. We send our least qualified people into combat. Just because many are ill suited for much else in life doesn't mean we should teach them to kill. But it also means pride is inappropriate.
9
Understanding that it was built on lies, fear, greed and racism, what I learned from the Vietnam War was to never trust the federal government nor it's military servant nor their corporate suppliers. My father's "greatest generation" squandered the trust they had righteously earned in WWII with their misguided support for the debacle of US aggression in Vietnam.
10
Absolutely beautiful writing.
4
It was a pointless, senseless, utterly unnecessary waste of the lives and minds of too many young Americans.
It was, as well, a fatal blow to the American soul, and the beginning of the slow, agonizing death of The American Empire, through which the USA and its family of friends in the world are still suffering.
7
How fitting that this series about the "Ämerican War" should end with two American soldiers. You could not write a poetic piece about the three million dead of genocide, or the beautiful country we destroyed. The landmines and teratogenic chemicals we left behind.
Or about the millions of protesters, here and around the world.
What is strikingly lacking here is any guilt.
7
You're wrong. Guilt is part of the equation, the stories are intertwined.
1
My oldest brother was the only one of 12 siblings who went to 'Nam.
He wrote me often to "never come here no matter what cuz they know we lost back in '67, Moc!"
I always thought he left his soul there after some battle. Then, he walked through an unfathomable life the remaining decades, ...waiting for his body to catch up.
My little brother and I once searched 50 square miles of FL looking for our homeless older brother. We knew he favored the woods with numerous Vets, now panhandling for existence.
Bring him back. Off he went.
He refused beds; insisted on sleeping on the garage floors.
And under bridges. Outside.
Divorce. Jail. From extremely high paying jobs to getting fired, over and over. Best friend? Jack Daniels.
Violence that nightmares my youngest sisters still.
This war never ends.
His body did catch up to his soul. Easter Sunday five years back.
Honor guard Vets, no one knew, showed up from far away towns, and stayed for days so he was never once alone.
The final 21 gun salute in the cemetery left that pale smoke behind for us too.
So he is part of our conversation deeply at this Eastertime of year.
You know, NYT...
I have never once asked you a favor before. But I would sure be mighty grateful for you to reconsider the ending of this , and let it go one for a couple more years.
I tell you, it's helping a lot of people I know.
This Pale Smoke article could still be posted on a final to the series, somewhere down the road .
Just not yet.
11
Thank you for telling your brother's, and your family's, heartbreaking story, and please accept these belated, sincere condolences.
Being of the "Vietnam generation," I knew many young men who were deeply traumatized by their service in Vietnam, which had been compounded by the reception they received back home for doing what most had felt compelled to do. While some Vets were able to move forward with their lives (no one "moves on"), too many others have been life-long prisoners of PTSD. Fortunately the men I know have had ongoing counseling for PTSD that enables them to cope and keep functioning.
Though fervently anti-war myself, getting to know some returning Vets made me understand why they had served, and how "Hell no, we won't go!" was an overly simplistic concept of how to end the war. For so many of these Vets, military service had been a forced choice. Going to Canada when deferments weren't available wasn't a viable option for most draftees and men who enlisted in order to choose their service branch. While each man's story is unique, these Vets had been raised by the service-oriented WWII generation and lived in communities which fervently supported a man's military duty. Other Vets had enlisted because they had trusted their government, believed in the Domino Theory and the justness of American intervention. Most Vet's, it seemed, came home at a minimum disillusioned.
4
There is only one way to view the Vietnam War: a complete waste of lives and treasure.
7
This is a great column. Thank you.
3
No mention of the Vietnamese in this folksy pseudo-Hemingway prose. They do not matter, it seems. Only what Americans think or went through ever counts.
8
You need to lay off and realize that writing is a healing tool. The author is helping himself recover. Have some respect.
3
... a lovely piece, capturing the psychic real estate known only to those who were there ... no lessons, no moralizing, just the experience and the impending passage of veterans who can peer into each other’s souls with a couple of sentences
3
"What does the Vietnam War mean? "
A very foolish adventure, that should stand as a warning beacon for all Americans, but especially the young who are called to fight and die, to resist the call of war. There is no war that is "necessary," not even that "Good War" (WW2--read HUMAN SMOKE by Nicholson Baker for proof). All wars are examples of venture capital betting your children's lives, and your grandchildren's treasure, for their ability to profit. Resist by any means possible--move to Canada or elsewhere, be willing to be jailed, march in the streets, don't pay for it with your taxes, be creative. I have only the deepest empathy and pity, mixed, for those who went; I wish you did not have to, I wish you did not go.
Here is an idea for next Memorial Day: Make No New Veterans!
6
As long as the children of those in power are allowed to escape the front lines, we will have wars.
For America to end our eternal conflicts, the sons and daughters of the elite (parade-worthy politicians and military commanders) MUST be required to serve in-country, hump heavy equipment through hostile areas, and risk bullets beside the rest of the soldiers. Would Bush Jr. have been so quick to invade Iraq if that meant his twins were forced to drive trucks past buried IEDs?
Would Trump bang the drums of war and threaten to push that big button on his desk if he knew Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric would be dumped straight into the ensuing conflict without Secret Service protection?
And why have so many of America's most hawkish leaders never spent a day in an actual battle? Have never had their physical survival threatened by a hostile, armed force determined to kill them? Have never seen their friends blown apart and bleeding out in the dirt next to them?
It's easy to bellow and posture in favor of war when you are risking virtually nothing of value by doing so -- especially when you have no clue what "war" actually means.
13
Thank you!
Additionally, our presidents who have been the most cautious about committing US troops to any foreign venture have served in the active duty military during wartime. President George H. W. Bush did put us in Kuwait but declined to go further to drive the Iraqis out, when military hawks wanted us to seize Baghdad, too. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy did buy in to Australia's Domino Theory, and commit military advisors to Vietnam, a role which President Kennedy expanded. But it was the always-civilian President Johnson who escalated our military presence so dramatically.
Remember also President Eisenhower's prescient warning about the dangers of the military industrial complex.
1
The people absolutely mattered, their sacrifice while serving and the pain they were put through when then returned "Home." I say it this way because for far too many, they came home to find that they were now "Strangers in a strange land." Their experience had changed them and our nation was not forgiving. They were spit upon, yelled at, and called the most vile names. Eventually we grew tired of the killing and ran away from Vietnam. Eventually we realized our mistake in our treatment of the returning vets and grew ashamed and more compassionate. It was the vets, as usual, who paid the price for our wisdom.
Today we treat our returning vets better, so we have retained that wisdom. We have not, however, retained the wisdom about war that makes their sacrifice necessary.
2
Before I was drafted in November 1966, I had marched against the war. I learned immediately when I began basic training that I did not have to preach about the war. The vast majority of the trainees did not want to go to Vietnam. When I was assigned to Fort Dix after training, the Vietnam returnees were very bitter and had a contempt for the Vietnamese. The pentagon sent the Vietnam levies to each fort at the end of the month, and the fort became silent and gloom pervaded every barrack.
In January, two days before the Tet offensive, I landed at Ton Son Nut. The troops waiting to board my plane began chanting as we deplaned, "You'll be sorry, you'll be sorry, you'll be sorry..."
5
Just gotta say...terrible colonial-type war, based on nothing but lies from our government, nothing positive accomplished...a great and totally unnecessary loss of life and treasure to no avail....BUT...those who answered the false clarion call to war from our criminal administration at that time...served honorably and did their duty. They should be afforded respect and remembered positively. Those who went to Canada and other places should also be afforded respect...their choices and lives were not easy.
7
Like so many Americans, Gerstel has a cosy rose-tinted view of his country. He needs to be dof the other Vietnam Vets, the ones who fought on the other side at unimaginably greater cost, losing not 60,000 but several uncounted millions. It was they who endured a decade of B-52 bombers, eight and a half million tons of bombs, millions of gallons of Agent Orange, free fire zones, the mass bombimng of the peasantry into the cities to starve out the guerrillas. It was these other Vietnam Vets who fought for decades on rice and salt and a little dried fish when they were in luck. They did not have medical evacuation in minutes by helicopter or ice-cream on the battlefield. Spare a thought and tear for them.
7
War was waged on both sides, nobody walked away unscathed.
".. You never knew their stories, because they are mostly private and you did not want to ask or know."
My father was a WW II veteran who never told a single story about his war experiences. Am I, and are all who have learned about veterans' reticence regarding their service, suddenly be blamed for respecting a stranger's privacy? Does he propose that everyone ask veterans for their war stories, when doing so will dredge up painful memories?
1
That's not what he's saying at all. The author is simply pointing out that these stories exist within people. How disrespectful of you to make this about yourself.
2
I seem to come back often to those who avoided Vietnam but then sent our children and grandchildren to Iraq.
5
I've attempted to read all the reader comments on this article and their comments on the Vietnam experience. I served in Vietnam because I was unable to avoid the draft and I am a law abiding citizen. The law stated if found physically fit and of sound moral judgement and called to serve, you went.
One memory I would like to share is Christmas Eve 1970. The catholic Chaplin at Quang Tri combat base announced he who hold a midnight mass ; all were invited. As mid night approached there was no Chaplin to be seen. Fifteen minutes later he appeared and apologized for the delay.
It seems an Army platoon just came in from "the field" after three days.
They were tired, dirty, hungry and obviously been in combat . They chose to attend mass, over a hot meal, a hot shower, etc. I don't know their religious preference. What I do know is, that platoon of men along with all the other assembled people began by singing Silent Night and not the most renowned choir in the world could have come close to the sound this group of men produced that night.
Of all my memories of those times, this is the memory that sums up for me the good and bad of The Vietnam Experience.
8
This is brilliantly written piece. It invokes mental images and visceral feelings that are difficult to express. I frequently see men my age wearing a Vietnam Vet cap. I want to stop and talk with them, but I don't. What prevents that simple connection with a "brother?" This piece explains it beautifully. Thanks.
6
This was a terrific series on the Vietnam War. Thank you. And thank you for ending it with this wonderful piece, which focuses on people. Because the people on the ground - fighting in war, protesting war, dying in war, suffering in war, are always the last consideration of those starting the war.
Yet, we keep on authorizing war, even war based on bogus pretexts like the Vietnam and Iraq wars, more apt to blame those who did or didn't go, than those who betrayed our trust and our patriotism by forcing the war upon us in the first place.
The folly and immorality of war is not lessened or the war justified by the winning if it, unless it is a war of necessity. Even then, it is devastating to all touched by it. If it is a war of choice, victory, as in Iraq, only leads to more war, less security, and a populace divided and conflicted. It may be a victory of arms, but it remains a defeat in every other way, nevertheless.
If only we could remember that before we make the decision to go to war, instead of always having to relearn it, afterwards, when it is too late.
7
Thank you so much for this series. My husband and I just returned from a visit to Cambodia and Vietnam and we read your articles before, during and after our return. There is an emptiness and sadness about what happened to our Vets during the War and a real disdain for the politiciand that brought our people to fight in the far away land. How our country treated our returning Vets was shameful. The U.S. shows it's brawn and bombacity at the start of every War and then doesn't know how it will end the War. I don't see any improvement in our Government to change this scenario, especially with this Administration. I know my understanding of this war has been deepened because of your series. Thank you again for the series and, above all, your Service!
3
I too want to thank the NYTimes, David Gerstel, all the other writers as well as the commentators for this series. As many others have said: this should be required reading for all federal elected officials.
7
This retired AF officer—who benefited from a student deferment during Vietnam—strongly favors universal service.
Our leaders send our “volunteers” off to fight wars we have no business fighting. Who pays the price? Not the privileged or the wealthy. The burdens of service must be shared by all. Thanks for a great series of articles.
16
US involvement in Vietnam began as a mistake and morphed into a tragedy.
To pour salt on the wounds years later the same mistakes were made in the Near East.
Beating war drums is simply admitting having nothing of value to say, stand for or support.
An excellent series. Bravo Zulu
USN 1967 - 71
Viet Nam 1968
16
Hap,
I live near the border . I know many Viet Nam vets and many people my age for whom Viet Nam never happened. Nobody I know left Viet Nam , they all left an essential part of their being behind. I am a man of 70 and those who served are my elders even if they didn't understand as I did back then that Viet Nam and the resistance meant your democracy had to die.
2
I would like to say one more thing. Back then, when I was young, dumb and hard charging, I really hated those who avoided service. I enlisted, was RA - Regular Army - and fought alongside many draftees. I had no use for those who protested, or fled to Canada. I thought our Country, and those of us who served, deserved better.
Slowly, I learned to accept that, those who I hated for their choices, were among those who I chose to fight for. I know that many of them will reject my reasoning, saying things like, "we don't want anyone to fight for us," and other things. And I get that.
My time and experiences in RVN taught me so much. About myself, my ideas, my ideals, my Country and my fellow citizens. I respect those who chose to go to Canada. They made a choice that could, and perhaps in many cases, affect their lives for a long time. But, at least they had the courage of their convictions.
Which brings me to the current "leader" of the free world in the White House. He chose cowardice. That is all he knows. He is not fit to shake the hand, nor salute, any member our Military. I do not mean to make this a political statement. I lost friends and brothers over there. We were identified by our serial number back then, not social security numbers. RA for enlisted and US for draftees. To us, your "tag" never mattered. You fought, bled and in too many cases died alongside us. You would have moved heaven and earth to protect me. As I would you.
Never forgotten
20
Heartbreaking. Thank you. But I always try to imagine what this country was like before that war, but I cannot remember.
4
My Conflict
Conflicted to this day
I still have nothing to say in public.
No decals, no patches. No projected pride.
Flunked out twice from college
Number 361 in the draft lottery
But I volunteered anyway.
"Adventure. I'm bored and restless..." -
The ad hoc excuse to my incredulous Mom.
Served on a DLG as a machinist's mate
deep down in the lowest decks -
tasked with helping keep the big grey ship moving.
No war stories of guns or encounters of my own,
Nor of sweat-drenched jungles or faceless enemies.
Just wisps of complete ship blacked out darkness
prowling silently up and down the coast or the harbors with unpronounceable names;
hearing perhaps bombs; perhaps thunder; perhaps nothing but complete silence
as I smoked soft red lit cigarettes and pot.
My pale smoke drifting quietly, invisibly, up from the softly rolling fantail.
Bored and restless; adventuresome and young
but so obliviously, bizarrely, ridiculously safe compared to my brave and constantly threatened brethren.
Whose stories invariably make me cry.
I still have not much to say.
USS Reeves DLG-24 - MM2 - USN - Jan. 1971 - Dec. 1974
18
Most musical and moving...
6
It's moving and incredibly sad that we never learn.
At the same time, I flinch when we describe the Vietnam War only in terms of what is does to us. It's more about Vietnamese, who had zero choice in being in the middle of it, passing maimed genes to their children and grandchildren, and/or dying because Johnson couldn't get re-elected if he backtracked. We're responsible for that, too.
Maybe if we considered "them" to be real people, as real as us, we would quit with the stupid wars. Not sure that would do it, but the extended tears for only our own aren't getting us anywhere good.
14
President Johnson should not be dismissed quite so harshly. Having chosen to focus on his presidency rather than a campaign, President Johnson nearly had brokered a peace accord with North Vietnam. The war would have ended in 1968; South Vietnam would have had a chance to exist as a nation.
However, Henry Kissinger persuaded the South Vietnamese president to reject the accord, promising him that Richard Nixon could get a better deal once president. So, thanks to Dr. Kissinger, working on behalf of then-Candidate Nixon, the Vietnam War instead went on for another seven years.
1
I am a regular at the Derby Village Store because Price Chopper, Shaw's and Walmart are not my kind of store. I am 70 and the deli counter at the Village store is comfortable.
I cross the border in Beebe and I am in a different country but the Village store is another place. I am the same age as Viet Nam vets but I am of a different world. I do not look act or speak like the vets in Derby or Newport.
The Northeast Kingdom is not Appalachia. Its people are educated and healthy. The young people working at the Village store are well spoken and articulate. The only difference between this side of the border and Vermont is that in Quebec poverty is not a crime and for people my age Viet Nam never happened. Looking into my eyes will not reveal pale smoke.
10
“The veterans of Vietnam are opaque coming to transparent, like onion paper held to light. Soon they will be crippled relics in homes and memories, photos on a dusty mantel or side table ...”
Poignant truth.
My life improved when Nixon announced draftees would no longer be sent to Vietnam, and again when my draft number was high enough for a guy born in 1953 to not get drafted.
The country didn’t keep faith with the people sent to fight. The National Guard and the Reserve weren’t activated, relying instead (for political reasons) on conscripting very young men and often boys too young to vote. America at war was supposed to mean a necessary fight, a committed country, a clearly just cause, and selfless competent leadership.
Years after the war I’d seethe when I’d hear a member of the Greatest Generation low rate the Vietnam Wall or try to discredit the woman in the famous photo at Kent State kneeling distraught over the dying protester. Veterans shouldn’t have had to fight so hard for VA benefits.
About five years ago I was walking home when I stopped for a ceremony. People were dedicating a small space at an entrance to a park in memory of a young man who died as a result of his service in a recent war. Most people at the ceremony were Vietnam Vets in a motorcycle club, still solid and tangible and keeping faith with a later generation sent to war.
8
I was drafted for Vietnam in Spring 1968. I showed up for the physical on the day RFK was killed, after mainlining amphetamine crystal for a week and then put on an act that had me rejected within two hours. I was proud of that, proud to be part of the resistance.
I never, to this day, wish I'd served there because I knew then as now, that it was dumb and unnecessary; that the Communists, with their nutty theories, were never going to dominate the world and their entire construct would implode of its own weight.
But I always felt that the men who served deserved more, if for no other reason than what their innocence and idealism cost them and the cruel way it was used by the Johnson's and McNamara's of our nation. I'm happy to say I never mistreated or looked down on our returning servicemen and women but I will always regret that I did no more than abstain from the cruelty shown them. Thank you Mr, Gerstel, for serving and for your service in writing this last entry in the NYT series.
12
Your belief that the great victim in all this was American innocence reminds me of the despair of Thomas Fowler, the British reporter in Graham Greene's "The Quiet American", when he fails to make the CIA agent Alden Pyle see the monstrosity of his lethal activities in Vietnam:
"What's the good? He will always be innocent. You can't blame the innocent, they'll always be guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity."
No matter what boudless mayhem America inflicts, the greatest victim will always be American innocence.
It is pitiful that after so much public discourse and many published books condemning this war that there are still some trying to paint a coat of respectability and honor on this war of shame, immorality, and American sponsored terrorism.
I have more respect for those that refused to serve by going to prison or into exile than those that allowed themselves to become blindly obedient soldiers intoxicated by patriotism.
History has absolved those who protested the war. The Domino Theory has been proven false and we now have diplomatic and trade relationship with Vietnam. How sad that so many on both sides had to die for an American mistake.
8
They turned the flower of our youth into war criminals. And those who dodged that one, did it to the next generation.
I enlisted, volunteered, and went over in 1967. After a few months I could not justify my part in the killing machine slaughtering folks in their own country. Saying so loudly resulted in everything I had being vandalized with two trips to the hospital for mysterious illness.
There is no glory in the murder of others, there is only anger, destruction, death, humiliation, and lasting damage.
19
"We had validated ourselves at the meat counter in a small rural town under a winter sky."
Really? But what about the estimated three million Vietnamese killed in the war, around one tenth of the country's population, a literal decimation? I regularly see Americans commenting on the 58,000 US soldiers lost, but rarely is a thought given, apparently, to the massive toll of death and the even larger toll of injury amongst the Vietnamese people.
As an Australian who protested against the war at the time and is well aware of the spurious nature of the Gulf of Tonkin incident used by the US as a casus belli, the ongoing justifications for this baseless, unforgiveable war of aggression by a superpower against a small, weak nation truly sicken me.
18
Well said ! Americans - evven anti-war Americans - talk as if Americans were the victims of this butchery, as if the victim was the supposed American loss of innocence. The millions of Vietnamese butchered and poisoned are forgotten.
2
Aussies need to remember that it was your government that came up with the "Domino Theory" which was the real reason for the eventual American military involvement in the Vietnam War. With your very low population, Australia was afraid of the Red Menace eventually invading your country, as the Japanese had begun to do in WWII. (The ANZACs were incredibly brave, effective soldiers, per capita taking the highest casualties of any nations in both world wars. There just weren't enough of them.) Your government's intention was for the Americans to save you again by stopping the Red Menace before it moved any closer.
That the American government bought your theory and then "intervened," inventing a pretext to do so, are all part of a series of horrible, consequential decisions which continue to affect individuals on all sides who were touched in any way by the war. The U.S. owns what we did, and so does Australia.
2
When, if ever, are we going to learn. I am 72 and "fought" in America to end the war, but went to Vietnam in 1990 and 1991 with a friend of mine who was there for three "tours", 1967 through 1970. He's okay. Came back unscathed, both physically and mentally. He is not a Trump supporter and doesn't even own a gun, nor do any of the other combat vets I know from that time. They don't hunt or think that guns are "cool". THEY'VE BEEN SHOT AT...AND SEEN THEIR FRIENDS KILLED.
Wars are started by those who haven't experienced the loss and devastation of one. How many members of Trump's family have been in the military? Has John Bolton been in combat? How about Cheney? Or W? Or and of the neo-cons who want to strike first. Shameful.
Wake up America. Especially working class America. It will be your sons, and now daughters, who will fight and die in the corporate wars waged by the wealthy.
As we used to say way back in the 1960's..."make love, not war".
21
I too am a drafted combat vet of nam. I was wounded there.
Ive heard a saying which is close to true, it is: If you were in combat and were not truly changed and affected, you were never really there.
Im in my twilit yrs and live off VA pills for pain.
my shortened tour has never left me. I hold small bitterness to some that got out of going but cannot wish that war as I knew it upon another person.
we are all now just trying to get by. I don't want that war to kill me so I stay strong and as sane as possible.
10
Seems odd. A US Navy helicopter pilot in Danang? I am aware of the "Sea Wolves" - a Navy helicopter squadron that supported the SEALs and others in the Mekong delta - but other than that group, I thought the only Navy helicopters in Vietnam were on carriers or supply ships.
Seems like the author is making some unsupported assumptions.
3
In other, less eloquent words: two men who killed people in a useless war meet up in a grocery store. I don't think we should make what the United States did in Viet Nam in any way romantic.
8
I teach Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien to high school seniors, an astonishing work about Vietnam. Of course I realize that empathy and imagination only take me so far. Only experience can really teach anyone what it is like be a young person in a war. Or an older person who will never entirely go home again. I will read this to my students and hope that they understand a little better, as I think did.
3
I lived those days as a protester. Reading this felt sad, a sense of mortality through the image of the life of this man, this veteran, in the beautiful cold winter world of Vermont.
But I also felt a humanizing, a remembering of what I've known for many years. That despite what I still firmly believe was the just cause of our protests, the young men of our generation suffered, not only from the war itself but also their country having questioned their actions. This too carries a sadness; but also a sense that such are the complications of life. This is not a sense of resignation, but more a kind of open-ended acceptance, and even hopefulness, a certain sense of peace.
13
Another great article that I relate to in so many ways. I've read every one in the series and am always most affected by those written by other vets. I've also saved them all to my hard drive but don't really know why. I doubt I'll ever re-read them; as with visiting the Memorial Wall, it's just too emotionally draining.
Family/friends know little of the time I spent over there. It's nothing to be ashamed of but it's also not something I choose to discuss. They know the few minor scars on my back (shrapnel from the floors of Hueys hit by incoming rounds) and the fact that loud noises make me jump are both remnants of my 16 months over there. But, compared to the impact that senseless war had on so many others, I lose sight of how lucky I was.
I totally agree with those who favor reinstating the draft or, at a minimum, universal service. And eliminate those college and bogus bone spur deferments. Not so more kids can be shipped off and killed/maimed but because those kids, their parents and, most importantly, their elected officials will be required to give some serious thought to the rationale (or lack thereof) behind our involvement in conflicts like Vietnam.
I'm thankful to the NYT for this series but I, for one, am glad it's concluding. Fifteen months of reliving something I'd rather forget is enough.
17
I am quite familiar with Viet Nam and quite familiar with the history of the Indo China conflicts (plural.) There are many, many things to be said. I will say just one. What the US calls the Viet Nam war is what the Vietnamese call The American War. How so? Because it was America's war and was distinct from the Chinese war which came later. As much as the USA - and I - may lament US deaths I see little remorse for the deaths and maiming of the people there; many, many times the US number.
14
I think we remember it for what it was: a terrible crime committed by the United States government. It was a war based on lies by the Eisenhower through Nixon administrations, justified by paranoia and racism, resulting in the deaths of over 1 million Vietnamese and hundreds of thousands of Cambodians and Laotians. If the Nuremberg standards were applied, all the war planners (including the Secretaries and Presidents) would have been imprisoned or hanged.
But we will remember the war only in terms of how honest we are with ourselves about it. When President Carter was once asked about the possibility of reparations for Vietnam, he replied that he didn't think that was necessary because "the destruction was mutual." As much as I admire Carter's post-presidency life and work, that statement demonstrates such appalling ignorance (being as kind as I can). Perhaps he knew he couldn't speak the truth. But it is typical of our country (and other imperial powers) that we simply have no sense of how much destruction we have wreaked on other nations and peoples.
21
Thank you for your post which summed up much of what I have always thought as well. While Mr. Gerstel's article was hauntingly beautiful and deeply moving, as a anti-war activist of that era (born 1947) I have different memories of the young men who went to war, the young men who didn't and the reasons why. Even then, in our late teens, we all knew (in our simplistic naivete) the racial and economic disparities of those who followed militaristic policies and those who didn't.
11
The Vietnam War was a dilemma. The reasons for the war were apparently unclear even to the leaders who committed this country. There was also a draft, and any male aged 35 or under who was not married with children, or under the age of 24 living full-time on a college campus was very likely to get drafted. This reality led to decision making that otherwise wouldn't have happened. Those who burned their draft cards and were willing to go to jail for breaking the law may have been on the right side, if they were against that war, that was never even declared by Congress.
7
A very poignant and subtly moving piece to end a wonderful series.
I still feel lifted when someone says "thank you for serving", even if the phrase has become perfunctory. I still become sad and tearful when I'm reminded of those who died and did not get to live out a full life.
I fear for our country when our leaders don't have military experience that allows them to buffer their thinking with the emotions and memories that go with such service.
Thank you NY Times for giving us such a diverse and wonderful series of articles.
17
A beautiful piece of writing and recollection. Though I was not there I could feel the smoke and the pain.
4
It is important to note that the Vietnam war, America's role in it, did not end 50 years ago. The final withdrawal (escape) came in 1974, so we are looking at closer to 40 years since it ended, not 50.
Why is this important? In the 1970s and '80s, I noticed there was an effort in public media, probably reflecting the public mood, to put Vietnam in the long ago, historical category even after a very few years had passed. People wanted it gone. Perhaps I was included in that general desire, but I will never forget the war, the problems it caused at home, the deaths of two of my high school classmates, the ridiculous things that people did to get out of serving and, most of all, the absolute betrayal by our national government not just of the generation that fought there (actually, there were a couple of generations involved) but its failure to commit the whole nation to the war honestly and, instead, work through the forced service of the draft to try to have it both ways, war over there and a pretend peace at home.
All of those who were alive and aware at the time are veterans of the Vietnam conflict, although there are those who were of the right age to have gone, like Donald Trump, for whom it was a mere blip in their lives.
Vietnam issued a clarion call to the younger generation not to turn away, not to take for granted that your government was doing right and to never stop making a moral statement of opposition. Our lives have never been the same and never will be.
14
I will miss this series. It was one of the best things the Times has ever published. Stories haunting, real and distant now. But this final piece was poetry and true with the sadness of a fading era, and of men and women bound by courage and tragedy.
Thank you
23
Thanks for the retrospective series. My 70-71 successive assignments as a grunt/logistician/civil-military officer exposed me to many lessons about why we could not prevail militarily nor succeed in nation building. Political objectives were well placed; we thought we could accomplish anything we set as an end point. Once we jumped in, we found out otherwise, with no do over available. My post-Vietnam experience has not followed the negative mainstream. I've heard no critical comments from non-participants. Just lucky, I guess.
7
Beautifully written finale to a great series. These articles should be required reading for every member of Congress and the Trump administration.
18
Neither members of Congress nor (especially) anyone in the Trump administration would ever read this series. Too disruptive to preconceived ideas.
5
Two men. Strangers. That’s how draftees we’re sent to Vietnam. One at a time. By themselves. They came home that way, too. It hadn’t been done that way before and hasn’t been done that way since. Of all the wrongs regarding Vietnam that was one of the biggest. We still don’t honor Vietnam veterans the way we should, in part because there is no local cohesion, and they seem to prefer not being singled out. Of all veterans they are the least recognized and the most deserving. They are all heroes in my book.
25
We don't honor Vietnam vets because the Vietnam war was not an honorable war. So those who served and survived are often doubly scarred--by the unfathomable horrors of war itself and by the torrent of negative opinion against it, especially after the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, that splashed onto them for being part of it.
My exhusband served fifteen months in 1970-71 as a rifle platoon leader in the Vietnam jungle after having been drafted in 1968 soon after college graduation. The only thing he ever told me about his Vietnam experience was of going into a bar at SeaTac airport after having been summarily mustered out of the Army at Fort Lewis on his return to the States. Necessarily for the commercial flight home, he was still in uniform, silver bars on his shoulders, and a man too young for the draft spat out "Baby killer!" as he walked by. I think it pained him as much as the scars of war itself.
4
Thank you for writing about this moment, the past is present among us. Thank you to the NY Times for the Vietnam 67 series.
"For a second, I thought I saw a young man, looking out the door of an aircraft at the jungle "
Billy Joel: "We held on to each other, as brother to brother"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjzjhl-QztE
6
So many commenters are Vietnam Vets it's amazing. It also makes me sad because it makes me think that people not associated with Vietnam didn't read this amazing series. I did though and I learned so much. I am so grateful to all those that served. I feel awkward on the streets saying it, but I am grateful for everyone's service in defense of Vietnam and our values.
I hope they do one on the Gulf War next!
10
This is an absolutely beautiful piece of writing. Thank you, NYT, for this series. Let's have more: '68, '69, '70. Writers of this caliber are a gift to us all.
19
On Good Friday 1971 my now-former husband turned command of the rifle platoon he had led through the Vietnamese jungle for close to a year with no fatalities over to a new lieutenant. On Easter Sunday the new platoon leader ran the platoon over a mine field, killing himself and two thirds of his men. On Easter Monday my husband reassumed command of what was left of his platoon and led them without further fatality until his "early out" the following August after almost fifteen months on the front lines.
He returned a shadow of the man who had left, haunted by the ghosts of his soldiers, refusing ever to have his back to any door, lowcrawling across the room at the sound of any helicopter. In the years our marriage lasted, he never once talked about Vietnam (I learned of his Easter experience from his stepdad, himself an Army officer, long after the fact), and he never once let down his vigilance for impending danger. The last time I saw him his eyes were still clouded with the pale smoke of remembered death, remembered fear, of sacrifice and loss for no good reason.
74
I wonder about the memories of the wives and families of the Vietnamese military victors.
One of my cousins descended into depression, drug addiction and suicide after his Vietnam War combat service. But his name is not on 'The Wall'.
2
@blackmamba: I'm so sorry about your cousin's suicide, and cannot fathom his family's pain--or their frustration that his name does not appear on the memorial. It is my understanding that the wall only includes the names of those who committed suicide while they were still in Vietnam. Jan Craig Scruggs who heads the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund says there is not enough room on the wall to include the names of those several thousand veterans who committed suicide after their return.
2
To honor these service members, why not a have second memorial for the Vets who died because of the war but after returning? This would include both suicides and deaths from physical injuries.
Doing this for all wars also would give citizens a much better sense of the human cost of military conflicts. Adding plaques nearby which list the numbers of military and civilian casualties from all sectors involved in the conflict would be even more sobering.
I am very disappointed that this series has ended. I had assumed there would be a Vietnam '68 and '69, etc. Since I was there in 69-70 much of this series missed my experience although it was touched on in various articles. With so many veterans there are many stories left to be told.
20
Absolutely. PLEASE please keep this series going.
2
Drafted in '65, I was surprised to find basic training included an interview to determine how I would best serve my country. I had newspaper experience, so they made me an "Information Specialist," and shipped me to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. Because the 50th State is a Pacific crossroad, we interviewed lots of GIs, and heard the same horror stories. I knew every day that I had lucked out.
We had a guy, last name Curran, sent back to Schofield from Vietnam. His story was that, during a firefight, he had his first epileptic seizure, and doctors said he had to avoid stress, probably for the rest of his life. So, epilepsy does not get you home. You just get reassigned and avoid stress, like knowing you might or might not have another seizure, or might or might not have several. Forever. But avoid stress.
I still think about Curran sometimes. He was a casualty as sure as any whose name would end up on a large, black chevron in the seat of the government that ricocheted his life as certainly as a bullet. Stories abound of people who came back changed for the rest of their days. Curran was one of those, for sure. Some will say at least he got out intact, but I'd have to ask for a definition of, "intact." For all I know, he could be the fellow in the Derby Village store, with a jacket too light for the season and pants out of fashion.
18
Poignant and beautifully written. As co-author with Grady Myers of "Boocoo Dinky Dow: My short, crazy Vietnam War," I've talked to so many vets, each with a unique story. Those who wear a Vietnam veteran cap or patch usually appreciate when having their service acknowledged. But the vet is just as likely to be found -- without any clue to his or her time in Vietnam -- at the front of a classroom, on a factory floor, presiding at a powwow. Only those of us who have loved and lived with combat vets (and sometimes not even us) have a clue about the impact of war on their lives. Many thanks to the Times for this marvelous series of articles. https://www.shortcrazyvietnam.com/
14
Only the survivors can describe the loss; but everyone should recognize the loss. The fathers that never were, and families never born; the inventions never invented; the painters and artists who never painted or wrote or created; the businesses never started, and business leaders never risen through the ranks; the lovers and friends who never got the chance; the politicians who never got the chance to change things;
The President who was never elected.
I was lucky to survive...I think.
23
March 31, 2018
As a Vietnam Veteran 1967 - my service was proudly to the benefit and service of our nation and its national interest as enacted and with conscious deliberate reflection as to my own role and duty to represent those that would stop to aggression by Communist violence from Cuba to North Vietnam and as directed by the laws guiding the best for the democratic humanism of strength universal - I achieved my goal and remain strong to America's attempts to shed its grace and light to all that seek universal dignity - democracy.
9
Thank you for sharing the perspective of someone who believed in what he was called to do. While I don't agree with your premise about the validity of our government's successive decisions that led to increasing troop commitments in Vietnam, I greatly admire and deeply appreciate your willingness to put your life on the line for our country's founding principles
1
Your talk of Communist violence falls flat when we remember that America came 8500 miles to devastate a country the size of Alabama with four times the tonnage of bombs dropped in the entire Second World War in the whole world, used twenty million gallons of Agent Orange to turn vast areas of Vietnam into permanently defoliated and poisoned territory, leading to hundreds of thousands of badly deformed babies, massively depopulated the countryside with bombing campaigns and the order to kill anything that moves, and left about 4 million people dead in a population of about 40 million at the end of the war. Try spreading the grace of American values at less cost elsewhere. Even your anti-Communist pretext is bogus: long before the end of the war the USA was in collusion with Red China, and after it ended the Americans armed and funded Pol Pot to bleed the Vietnamese.
2
April 4, 2018
I will leave historical justice to the Academy and further hyper emotional cause and effect is old hat and not tried and true. Especially the full equation of the warring is arcane and best left to the historians that are impartial and worthy of weighed measures that are witnessed and as well it best to remind - justice is ever the account of time and consensus to what we trust - in God we trust and as well the world's collective efforts that will take a century or more to deconstruct the Vietnam Communist era war fought on all sides by what was available and then with personal witness for troops, journals both in theater and continue to empress our interpretations for all actors. Including herewith the comments that are random and unfiltered by world class publications - including the New York Times Reporting that is fit to print and preserve infamy
jja Manhattan, N.Y.
1
David, thank you for a beautifully written piece. Simple, yet eloquent. Of things that, once seen, cannot be unseen. Of a shared brotherhood, a bond that needs no words. We don't like to talk about it with others who have not been there. I'm not sure why, but there it is. Maybe somethings simply can't be explained with words. I know, that for me, my time and experiences up country, outside the wire, helped make me who I became. It was a hard road at times, but I am a better, more complete human for it.
Not all of us came home. And all of us left something of ourselves behind.
Absent friends.
HHT. 1/9th Cav, Ist Air Cav,
H. CO. 75th Rangers, Ist Air Cav
June '69 - April '71
20
Glad you made it back, so many of us didn't. I would do it all again in a heartbeat for my Brothers in Arms, as somany have so eloquently stated. Those who have never served will never understand that. Not much time left and we too will be gone.
N. CO. 75th Rangers, 173rd Airborne Bde.
1
Thank you, NYTimes, for this series. As to A Pale Smoke, such is a great way to close the series, and it continues to resonate in me, this ground pounding grunt from a war of many voices.
19
A very moving article - In February 1967, I was drafted out of grad school at the age of 25, and was in Vietnam November 1967-November 1968. Upon my return to a stateside assignment, there were times and places where I did not feel comfortable wearing my uniform in public off-post.
8
The pendulum swung the other way. Americans salute the troops daily now. Sometimes 3 or 4 time per ballgame. Good thing we’re great...again.
While visiting New York as a young tourist in '65, I attended my first antiwar gathering at Madison Square Garden--Wayne Morse, Joan Baez, the whole nine yards. But the guy who turned me against the war forever that night was Hans Morgenthau, a brilliant, tough-minded, realist refugee from Hitler and professor from Chicago. Morgenthau pitilessly simply laid out what a total debacle the war would be. It was obvious that he was right. So I've always regarded the war as the most monumental act of international stupidity in American history--until Iraq was even stupider, and Iran may be the stupidest of all, if Bolton and Shel Adelson get their way. Tragic that so many Americans, and so very, very, very many more innocent Vietnamese had to die for this idiotic mistake.
64
Unfortunately, we as a nation are lately ill served by our governments, regardless of party in power.
War is the default position meant only to further the interests of the military-industrial complex Ike warned us about in the 50s.
14
I was a door gunner for the 155 in Ban me thout, I came home wounded and on crutches. My father was not a loving man, he knew my injury upset my mother. he was a cook in ww2 I think he felt belittled that the military honored my service even the brain cancer or the stress could kill me. I am looking forward to my name being with those on the wall. with those soldiers that took their own lives.
8
We need to hear the voices of the men with caps that read "Vietnam Veteran." That they don't feel forgotten. Thank you.
9
I hate to say this but as a Vietnam veteran reading this article sent up some red flags?
2
WOW! Please David Gerstel. Write again.
6
No words....
4
So maybe it's time to talk about the Americans who survived the Vietnam Holocaust .
1
We should have sent Cheney and Bush, and saved a generation of our military.
18
The youngest American vets of Vietnam would be about 61 now (18 in '75?) Hopefully some of them will still be around in 30+ years. Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, Iraq vets to follow, and younger ones not yet born of more American wars to come. We are a warring nation, sent by the rich and fought by the working and middle classes. The 1% and all their friends at the country club whose sons and daughters are always too patriotically or physically frail to join the fight "thank you for your service."
26
Fine, superbly written article. I would like to think General Bone Spurs reads it. But I doubt it.
21
I have appreciated the series, especially the comments from those who served. A fitting epitaph to the series. Those words from "All Quiet on the Western Front" come to mind ~ they shall not be missed ~ as well as those from "Macbeth" : "...your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end." The former underlines the futility of pointless death and the need to be callous to suffering in order to survive mentally. The latter is a reminder of individual loss that only those who lost loved ones must deal with. Both are good reasons not to go to war in the first place. However, that remains an unattainable ideal. "To care for him who has borne the battle and for his widow, and for his orphan." - Abraham Lincoln. That, at the very least, is what we owe those who have sacrificed by fighting in our wars. The pale smoke from so many fires that give more heat than light continues to rise and dissipate into the collective indifference of a world inured to horror.
16
Wars are horrible. The scars and traumas remain with the survivors, Americans, Vietnamese and many others. And yet, our leaders speak of war as a part of geopolitics. It is not. War is always a tragedy for everyone involved.
22
powerful, unforgettable, thanks for writing. How quickly years pass.
15
...a few moments' coincidental meeting, a fleeting recognition of shared times of long ago, seen through the fog of years' sifted details, a chasm suddenly closes and as quickly widens again, and the memories' embrace ceases with a glance at the closed door and a retreat to the now. "A Pale Smoke" captures with beauty a few seconds that will remain forever. Nicely done.
14
Beautiful piece to close the series. Writing this through tears for all those who did and didn’t survive.
19
Magnificent writing to end this timely series.
Those of us who returned hoped to regain our youthful innocence, but America's rejection left us feeling wounded and abandoned. Some of us simply buried our memories of this war deep inside. Others numbed the hurt with drugs or booze.
Despite everything we've endured, one strong bond remains regardless of color, religion or culture -- We Vietnam veterans will always remain brothers.
Semper Fi!
14
The Vietnam War filled my adolescence and ended on my 19th birthday. I remember family discussions about how would we get my brother Tim, who is one year younger than I, to Canada. When I travelled around Vietnam in 2002, I made a trip to My Lai and walked through the area where the massacre occurred, crying and offering flowers and incense of propitiation. It took most of my life for me to overcome my distain for Vietnam Vets because I felt that had more of them left the country rather than be drafted, the war would have ended sooner.
And then there was George. George is a Vietnam Vet who sometimes stands at the beginning of Montgomery Street at the east-west crosswalk just north of Post Street in San Francisco. I'm not sure how George wormed his way into my heart, but he most surely did. When more than a couple of weeks went by without my seeing him, I worried. I took to chatting with him when he was there. They were standard little "How are you" conversations and I enjoyed them. Although I still firmly believe we had no business being in Vietnam, my coming to know George caused me to reassess my views on the vets. They were young men who were (largely) sent there against their will or wishes.
Thank you, George, for being yourself and helping me to open my mind.
18
As the daughter of a Vietnam Vet, your comment incensed me. So stereotypical. Most of those who spent years harboring "disdain" towards Vietnam Vets like my dad couldn't hold a candle to his integrity. Please keep educating yourself on the Vietnam Vet population and who is amongst its ranks.
1
Touching finish to a great series of articles.
Historical perspective is sorely lacking in our country's leadership these days.
More series like this would be wonderful.
26
If we has a leader who read.
10
I am a veteran of that seemingly forgotten Korean War. It's memory has risen from the ashes big time in recent days because of The newest Kim. I was a Medical Technologist in the 279th General Hospital and never was exposed to enemy fire. However for al oust two years in 1951-2, I saw plenty of the effects of live fire on our soldiers. Even worse in some respects was the many amputations because of frostbite from fighting in the Korean mountains in bitter cold winters. Often when kneeling next to a wounded soldier on a stretcher just flown into our hospital I would face someone who had fought in WWII and was now a Master Sargent leading a platoon under the proverbial young, inexperienced Second lieutenant. Unfortunately, many of these soldiers would go on from Korea to Vietnam particularly as advisors in the mid fifties after the defeat of the French.
I am now 86 years old and in reasonably good health but I am very sad to see the continued maiming and killing of our youth in wars that are more or less dubious particularly as to their aims.
84
I haven't forgotten Korea, WSF. One of my dad's best friends was a Marine who served in WW II and was reactivated for Korea. My dad was in the Navy in World War II, from December 1941 until October 1945. The guys who were his closest friends were guys who never talked to me about war, but had served in horrible conditions. Korea was up there at the top of that list. I so admire you guys for what you endured.
1
In my Baby Boomer Youth (b 1961) in Three Oaks Michigan, many of the Veterans of wars past would put on the Dress uniforms for the Flag Day Parade ( http://www.threeoaksflagday.com/gallery.html ).
The men of our town wore the uniforms of World War I, World War II and Korean War Service even as the Vietnam War raged on the TV screens of my youth- they were our Dads, Uncles, Neighbors and such. I do not remember the returned Vietnam Veterans wearing their uniforms although I am quite sure they were in attendance.
Those men, like my Father who served in the Navy during World War II, are all or almost gone now. In those days the young men going to Vietnam were not much older than I and those returned not much more. Years later, in Basic Training at Fort Leonard Wood with Charlie 3-3, the veterans of that war were our Senior Drill Instructors and at permanent duty our Platoon Sergeants and Commanders. One Battalion Commander was the legendary (then LTC) Robert Howard who won the Congressional Medal of Honor as an NCO.
Those young men of the 1960's and 1970's are now old men. It does not seem possible, but my own service ended in 1990- almost 30 years ago.
These days I get a Pedicure in a Vietnamese Salon staffed by children of people my old Sergeants and Officers fought in their youth. That war still makes no sense, but the men who served answered the nation's call and gave it all they had.
To all who served: Thank You and Welcome Home. You got a raw deal.
26
I just got back from Vietnam. They have museums there that chronicle the war from their point of view. I did not go to them. There are big photos and statues of Ho Chi Minh, his picture is on the currency, and Saigon is renamed for him. The streets are cracked and broken and there are rats because of all the sidewalk cooking and eating. The water will give you Montezuma's revenge, if your system is sensitive. There are malls with Western merchandise and International films play. French is no longer the featured second language; English is. So what was our War there for? We have a vassal state where we can sell Fanta soda and Mars bars.
12
Luchino: Why did you not visit the museums that chronicled the war from the Vietnamese point of view? Is that not something we should know?
3
They have their national unity whiich America tore up heaven and earth in a grotesque bid to prevent. They have the admiration of the whole world for having proved themselves the bravest and most resilent people the world has ever known, a peasant people who defeated all the frenzied attempts of a superpower to impose its crude and egoistic will on them. They vndicated human dignity and gave inspiration to every person who wishes not to be bullied and overawed by anyone whosover. Is that not something? I venture to think it is a whole world of achievement. It's worth a few cracked pavements that will be fixed in time.
1
I finished HS in 1970, and, like all men of that time, got a draft number. It was a lottery, based on your birthday. My number was 120. They stopped drafting at 104. I had no interest in going, so did not volunteer. At that point, the opposition to the war was universal in my age group. I have thought occasionally about the fact that I missed the "war bonding" experience. I have decided that this is a totally idiotic question, and that "war bonding" and "male camaraderie" is basically a poor price to pay for getting killed or crippled. Thank goodness I did not go.
However, the US military should institute a draft, and all men AND women should be eligible. A draft would mean that EVERYONE would participate in each moronic war. Bush 43 sent us to the idiotic war in Iraq for some stupid idea of his own. With a draft, there would have been a lot more opposition. We have been involved in that war for 14 years now. If we had a draft, the opposition would be building and building, and Obama would have pulled us out. In many wars, the way to end them is, like Nixon, to "declare victory and get out". After D-day, it was 11 months to V-E day. We have been involved in Iraq/Afghanistan for 14 years. When is it time to declare victory and leave?
36
I too finished high school in 1970. At the time, an all volunteer army seemed like a good idea, but I have serious reservations about it now. It would be better to restore the draft.
11
Like many Americans I was a kid during Vietnam. My cousins went and several came home in body bags, others fled to Argentina to avoid conscription. Vietnam was emblematic of America's stupid insistence on ignoring foreign intelligence, in this instance the French telling the USA that we had to let Vietnam go Communist, after their debacle at Dien Bien Phu. Nope, we weren't having that froggie advice, when there were so many dividend checks awaiting from our defense contractors! Vietnam is where America lost its soul to heroin and a new morbidity as we saw what our weapons could do to other humans, for no real purpose other than to make those who stayed at home nursing bone spurs rich...
42
A poignant punctuation to an outstanding series - thank you from an FMF corpsman, 1/13 Mar, I Corps - '67-'68.
14
Crayola only has 120 colors, and every hue was used in closing.
A final paragraph on what Progressives want to force on Vietnam today, would've required a new color; created by scribbling together the colors that could best describe '67.
"This is the final article in the Vietnam ’67 series."
Fine, you've edged into '68, so start a "Vietnam 69" series. The Times thinks this is all there is to be said?
9
Gerstel's piece is magnifcent.
It is quiet agony.
And I am outraged that so few people have seen fit to make a comment.
The best stuff is always ignored by vulgar, crass and uncaring people.
14
David,
Console toi....this outstanding series was also read over here!
1
Everyone should read this.
14
Thank you.
7
Thank you.
5
i want to thank the nytimes for doing this series i hope they preserve the articles and the comments somewhere--maybe send to smithsonian?? because its kind of like the "peoples record" of that war. i wish i had asked my dear late husband questions, but i never did. he did 2 tours flying f-4's. i think i didn't ask questions because i knew altho we did not talk much about the war that it was a very tough subject for him so i just listened when he decided to say something about it. he would never go to the wall because "if he saw his friends names there, they would really be dead" the casualty rate for his class which i did figure out by asking questions was 80%, 30% killed, 50% wounded, he had 2 purple hearts. he did khe sanh where he got a presidential unit citation. now i wish i'd asked him about the 2nd tour where he decided to volunteer to be a spotter pilot with a montainyard (sp?) unit in the highlands "because they'd started to bomb hanoi again and that was "safer". he'd been shot down over hanoi on the lst tour and had gunned his plane when it lost hydrolics and made it out to the water to be picked up by the navy. i wish now i had asked him, "what were they there to "spot" i did talk about this with a marine col one time and he said the runways up there were barely 200 yds long so it must have been tricky landing. he did tell me he didn't like going over hanoi because they had to fly in formation and couldn't avoid the incoming...
5
This piece frames the long slow fade out of a generation as it departs the stage. We who thought as a generation that we would never grow old, or be broken by time now reflect on the past as we run out of road.
In this series I did not read how, if you were of a certain age, it seemed like Vietnam was the forever war. I grew up with it; it’s horror, its music, its damage, its protests, its broken men and mourning parents. My cousins went in the idealistic early 60’s, and as it kept going, revealing the pointless carnage, it seemed that I too would be sucked into its killing vortex. Serving and being mauled by its indifferent violence was a generational rite of passage it seemed.
But while I was lucky, and drew a high draft lottery number, I came to know many who were not. They were not college boys. They were mechanics, they worked the factory floor, cleaned toilets or undertook other menial labour. They were to a man damaged in some foundational way. They likely grew old in the manner of this piece’s broken old veteran.
America learned its lessons and now only sends volunteers to waste their youth, lives and bodies in pointless wars of pride. We are sheltered from the cost, yet pay it unknowingly all the same.
9
I am 100% disabled from heart disease and diabetes caused by my exposure in the Mekong Delta to Agent Orange. More and more, I ponder on why 58,000 on the wall and thousands more came home with the unseen killer.
Who among those 58.000 that died might have gone on to find cures for diseases, or build a better America? They were killed in an unwinnable war that should have ended in 1968. We essentially lost an entire generation of young Americans killed and medically wounded for no sane reason at all.
19
In grad school in the 70’s one of my colleagues had survived the war in Vietnam as the longest living tail gunner — he had a nervous breakdown in the fifth or sixth month of his tour riding a glass bucket. The average gunner lived two weeks. Afterward he studied classics because it was arcane, an expertise where he could hide so to speak like a coin collector as he once said. We knew each other for two years of chats about the ancient invention of verb declensions and one day he announced his dissertation topic — The Iliad. He had come full circle on his war experience, taking it with him into rarefied vocabularies. He did not finish however and after one summer I learned that he had left the country to teach English in Asia. Other than his story I counted among vets I knew best only one who had returned a believer even though his belief regretted we did not use tactical nukes in the north. Otherwise I witnessed divorces, alcoholism, joblessness, chloracne from Agent Orange, and now in older years suicide, suicide and suicide, in that order. Those who have written throughout this series survived being in country in amazing shape while every one of the war’s architects was ruined by it. No amount of revision can salvage the disaster of it in history just as fifty years from now no revisionism will salvage the folly of our Iraq invasion, and all after in the name of Jeffersonian democracy.
8
There were literally no tail gunners in Vietnam. Wrong war. Same dishonorable service for all.
Excellent
He mentions the 50- odd years that have passed since then.
For perspective, 50 years prior to my enlistment was 1917, which we see now in jerky, grainy films of the Archduke, Tommies going over the top, Woodrow Wilson, and so forth.
Now, we are those people, although I have a hard time believing it.
12
"Old soldiers never die, they just fade away," said General MacArthur, fade away into pale smoke.
Mr. Gerstel's essay is as eloquent and touching as anything I have read.
Fifty years from now will there be a similar series on Iraq and Afghanistan? More eloquent, profound, and touching stories of quiet struggle and heroism from soldiers who fought another pointless war founded on lies? Will we again strive to seperate the dignity of the soldier from the indignity of the mission?
Do we call soldiers heroes because if we saw them as victims we couldn't live with ourselves?
Will this ever stop?
13
Beautifully crafted. Keep writing. The purpose of art is to let others inhabit your reality. Thank you for inviting me in.
13
'He told me about friends on the wall, the memorial we thought was going to be singular, unique, though we learned that was a lie."
What does this mean? Why is the memorial not singular and unique?
4
Maybe, CA, because, even though The Wall listed, by name, those who died when all the other memorials were about the glory of winning, nothing has changed. America still goes to war for the flimsiest of "reasons" and young men (and now women) still die for no good purpose.
1
Thank you, CA. I also thought this comment was gratuitous and marred the otherwise fine writing.
I believe his point was it was not the memorial to end all memorials, unfortunately.
1
I have friends and relatives that are VV. If had had been born a few years earlier I might have been one also. What I notice most about those I know, is the unwillingness to discuss the matter. Or have license plates or caps declared as such. Quite a few suffered for years with ptsb. Still do. Most but not all struggled with a sense of normalcy depending on the degree of involvement. Post traumatic disorder is a real breakthrough in terms of dealing with a disease just beginning to be recognized and treated. I have a client who was in the gulf war. His ptsb is practically tattooed on his forehead. He is struggling in his relationships. I sincerely hope that every veteran from whatever war gets help for this. It is not a shrink flavor of the month. It is real and vets need help. Your help
3
I don't cry much, but my eyes swelled reading this article. I was one of the lucky ones whose lottery number back then (325) allowed me to be deferred from the draft. One of my high school friends was #1 and he fled to Canada. My entire life has seen wars, death and destruction. And for what? Religion, greed, weapons manufacturing... I truly wish to see our country learn the lessons of war through the eyes of these 2 heros and anyone who experienced horror. I pray for our country every day. When will we ever recover from our disasterous military and now our agent-orange leader. Isn't it a pity, isn't it a shame...same as it ever was...
12
I was there in Vermont with the writer, and the stranger at the Derby Village Store. I was there in Vietnam with the writer, and the "Vietnam Veteran U.S.N." I was there. I survived Khe Sanh, Phu Bai, Hue, Quang Tri, Danang, Chu Lai, the Mekong Delta. I was part of history, part of a story — the War — that should never have been written, should never have been written about from an American perspective. A sad story. “A Pale Smoke” that quickly and quietly disappears, has disappeared … seemingly now forever.
4
The fact that it is your government that asks you to go kill people does not provide a moral excuse for the killing. Each person has to question them self if the killing is justified. Is this war necessary to protect my country? Have all avenues been tried to avoid this war? Am I being told the truth about the reasons for this war? By what right do I go to a foreign land to determine their political future?
I honor our veterans but do not believe that they made the right or correct choice. I cannot expunge their guilt for them. And they would not ask me to.
3
Poignant and deeply authentic.
Two survivors, like ships passing in the night, remnants of a profoundly foolish war that should have been a seminal and indelible lesson to American, but was never authentically taken to heart.
17
Thank you for your wonderfully written piece. I would like to add a small recollection. For health reason I was told to walk daily and I walk along the East river to the Brooklyn Bridge. For nearly two decades, I saw clusters of homeless Viet Nam veterans, living in the nooks and open shelters in the park; perhaps they located there because of the VA hospital on 23rd ST. I could figure out how they survived, not burdened with flu , pneumonia and general violence as you would expect. They had advocates but they were still homeless , still drank, smoked and used drugs. I started seeing less of them in the past few years ; they shunned help unless the most minimum-and even well meaning people just gave up on them.Recalcitrant-unchangeable by families and friends . Finally about 18 months ago two had been given permanent housing, after decades. I do not see them anymore, but they were good funny men but truly damaged by the war.
7
'I could not figure out how they survived...."
1
"About 400 die a day..." Has it been 20 years, 30, since I read an almost identical phrase about my father's generation? There were many more of them, so the exact number is immaterial, but the import is unchanged. My days are numbered today, just as they were in 1969-1970, X's on a short-timer's calendar tacked on wall of your hootch or carried in the sweatband of your helmet liner. I managed to X out every one of the days.
More than once since, I've thought the truly lucky did not, their personal memories snuffed out with that final breath. Nearly 50 years later, not a day passes during which, at some point in that one 24-hour period, I have no thought of Vietnam.
I have no decals on my truck, even the smallest green-and-yellow striped ribbon awarded to all who set foot in country during the decade of the war. I don't own a gimme cap or a vest plastered with badges and pins. My awards for my year there are locked in small metal box inside a 500-lb safe filled with guns I rarely even take out to look at, let alone shoot. (Not one of them is an AR, though two are scaled down versions of the M-14 I carried in basic training. It has been years since either has had a round fired through them.)
In that small box, along with a couple of lesser awards, is a Bronze Star. Only my ex-, my wife of nearly 30 years, and my Trump-loving brother-in-law know of its existence. My parents did not, nor do my siblings or my sons.
There was a saying in Nam.
Don't mean nothin'.
65
I would recommend your comment twice if I could. Thank you
for your service. It was a difficult war for our country, and the people
that had to fight it. I didn't agree with the policies that landed us in
Viet Nam, but I respect very much the efforts and experiences of
our armed forces in Vietnam, most of whom were young and simply following orders. It means something to me.
8
"Don't mean nothin'."
Roger that.
3
Thank you, NYT, for the honor of this piece's selection as a "Pick."
And thank you, Paul from Boston and Hap in Oregon, for your heartfelt replies.
Please, please, NYT, don't let this series be the end of your coverage of the Vietnam War, its effect on America and especially on those of us who were there. Nowhere else have we been given such an opportunity to have our voices heard and our stories told...to the world and not just to our drinking buddies. Our stories and our pain is real and tangible and will be until the last one is in his grave.
We needed each other then. We need each other now. Don't relegate us to pale smoke, dissolving away in the winds of time.
Great series NYT, thanks.
As often happens to me, the final article makes me
wish we had treated Vietnam vets of all stripes better
than we did as a nation.
My politics regarding the war were the same in in the sixties and early seventies as they are now. I thought it was a grievous error for us to be in Vietnam in the first place, and I felt the enterprise was badly run by the politicians and top brass once it was underway.
But we should have had more grace regarding the men and
women who were in the Vietnam War and simply following orders.
Most of them were quite young, teenagers even, and over 58,000 of them died in the war. Many of the others suffered grievous injuries there, both physical and psychological. The servicemen and women who went to Vietnam are worthy of our respect and assistance, and I regret that as a nation we did not always make the mark in that regard.
33
What a moving haunting wise inside view on the Vietnam War from the American military warrior veteran context and perspective.
I was opposed to the war on moral grounds. And I dodged the draft by biological and chemical means by failing my medical physical. I have no regrets nor shame. Nor do I condemn and judge those who fought in and served in the war or supported the war. But I have no respect for those who supported the war but dodged the draft or did not volunteer.
Since 9/11/01 0.75% of Americans have volunteered to wear the military uniform of any American armed force. I wonder what they will think of their service 50 years plus from now.
10
We, as a country, lost an important piece of our character. It was very clear that we treated the returning veterans completely different than veterans returning from all the wars the country has engaged in, including the neighborhood clash in Grenada. Much of the country treated them with disdain as though they expected the entire military, all the soldiers and marines to lay down their guns and refuse to fight. Have we ever done that in any other war? We lost 58,000 in that war.
Do we condemn them too! Even though we should never have been there in the first place did we need to denigrate those who lived through there experience to put such an exclamation point on the war? Whatever it was that we lost of our character from that war, we haven't fully re-united with it. Maybe we will, maybe we won't or have we just moved on without even thinking about it.
4
Tom, I never knew any anti-war person who EVER spoke a harsh word to those who served in the war. We reserved our disdain for LBJ and his gang of Agent Orange, war criminal, old-men sending the young to war "leaders".
2
I didn't go to Vietnam. My family had moved to England in 1963 and overseas citizens were never called up. However, had it ever been likely that I would be, I would have taken steps to escape, either by fleeing to a place where I would be safe, or one of the other possibilities : pretend to be homosexual for instance.
I completely assume this. I also feel deeply for those that went, and totally respect their experiences. And I think that if it had been WWII I would have signed up, as did my father. But this war was a travesty, a horror from beginning to end. It should never have happened in the first place, and should have been stopped a long time before it finally did.
And the worst thing is America doesn't seem to have learned the lesson. It is still a militaristic gung-ho flag waving place, with strident war-promoting speeches made by those who never served and whose children never will. Meanwhile in the shadows, ignored or even reviled, linger the broken souls that were thrown into the meat grinder, for other people's glory, and other people's wealth. The whole thing is a disgrace and will remain an eternal stain on the country's history.
34
Excellent series, eloquent ending. My lasting memory that symbolizes the war is of a young man who returned from Nam and joined our administrative unit at Ft. Bragg. I first encountered Luke when he was sitting on the barracks front stoop staring blankly into space. He didn't speak. Had a sort catatonic reaction to the war. It took some time, a week or so for him to trust me and open up about his experience of being cook sent to Nam who was forced into combat action when his company was ravaged and depleted. As time went on Luke, a high school grad, became joined our little clique of anti war college grads. I think we were life savers for him. Within a couple of months he was affable, infectious laughter a joy, and though reticent to tell us too much relayed of his experience in fire fights to paint a picture of the war's horrors. He joined the anti war group that I was a part of, one of many returnees from battle who gave the movement much credibility. I refused to go when the brass tried to ship me over there in '70 due to convictions against the war, and remained stateside through a legal suit. The last person I said goodbye to on my last day of service was Luke. I gave him a long bear hug as he came to tears and with me remembering the state he was in that first day I met him. He probably still has nightmares wherever he may be. So does the country.
10
THis beautiful article is a perfect ending to the series of essays that you have published.
Thank you NY Times for brining back to my memory of the intensity of those days.
I was in my twenties, in medical trading and joined an anti Vietnam war group. No one had any animosity toward the young Americans sent into that abattoir for political reasons. To the contrary we had great sorrow at their uselesswounds and deaths.
The sixties for some of us when civil rights, ending the war, womens reproductive freedom and equal oppportunity and hopes for a more just America seemed attainable and were worth fighting for.
In our youthful hubris we thought we could change the world.
Perhaps in some small ways we did.
19
Thank you David, for this beautiful piece of writing. I found it to be a very fitting final article to this outstanding series about Vietnam. Maybe some day I will visit Vietnam. It is so strange to realize that half a century later, the turmoil that our involvement in that war engendered has faded to, as you say, a pale smoke fading away. I wish that all the surviving Vietnam vets will find some peace as they finish out their lives. And it is heartening to read how the Vietnamese don't hate Americans for the tragedy that we brought upon their country. May the Vietnamese also find peace and happiness in their lives as well.
16
This is a fitting endnote to the series, and beautifully written.
I don't think there was adequate understanding of even WWII veterans until we started paying attention to Vietnam's aftermath. DO any powers-that -be care, ever, to focus on the effects of war on the people who fought and those who provided the emergency care for the wounded? DO they ever apply lessons from the past?
I'll miss the series.
1
DG offers a beautiful piece of writing. The series was very special.
18
I am grateful for your article. As a Vietnam Veteran I find myself conflicted by pretty much everything concerning that war, but not about the men and women who went there, some as draftees and some "voluntarily" so they wouldn't be sent to jail.
I do think America needs to resume the draft and national service for all citizens, male and female, rich and poor. Serve two years in a public service, or six months less in the military. We should make it a law that no one serves as President without their first completing the national service. It is the difference between my father's generation and mine.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
121
Amen to that, Hugh. Amen to that.
5
Yep, I do agree, Hugh. As I find more confliction than not, making sense of the big and little things in my memories of fighting there, I have found your's and John F McBride's comments straightforward and much akin to the realities. Thanks to both of you.
2
Yes, we need a draft. That would put an end to the insanity of those who are comfortable with other's kids serving while they posture politically.
Endless, mindless war that takes advantage of the younger generation for political gain, and the middle and upper classes do not participate. Americans would never let their kids go off to a senseless war, if all kids were equally exposed to the possibility of death.
That is a sure insurance that this country needs - you want war? OK, let's send everybody's kids.
2
An outstanding, eloquent article. I was too young to serve in Vietnam, and am grateful to those who did, such as the author and those who have commented herein, but I have learned there has always been an abyss between "those who were there" and "those who never left home." Back in 1975, a Marine veteran of the war, who engaged in animated conversation with another veteran in my presence, went silent when I asked a question. He later admitted "you had to be there." The opening scene from the movie "The Hunt for Red October," has the following quote from Plato: "Only the dead have seen the end of war." How sadly and tragically true!
25
I've been following this series for quite some time. This last one, I really see myself in it. When I came back in 1969, I remember I wanted to talk about my feelings and what I had seen and done. All everybody wanted to hear about was the John Wayne stuff. I clammed up and I guess I've been that way for almost 50 years now.
74
I worked on a derrick barge in the North Sea oil fields in 1975. One of my fellow workers had come home to Louisiana a few years ago from a tour in Viet Nam as a machine gunner in a helicopter. Just as his tour was about to end, his helicopter had been shot down; he had spent the three most terrifying days of his life running from the Viet Cong. When he finally made the decision to signal his position to an approaching helicopter, he wasn’t sure who would get there first: the helicopter or the listening Viet Cong.
When he got back to Louisiana, nobody wanted to hear his story; he was expected to be interested in going shopping. He was about to lose a marriage for being so angry at the disinterest in the war they had sent him to fight. He was a good guy; I often wonder how things turned out for him.
1
John Wayne dodged the World War II military draft.
Ronald Reagan's World War II military service was making war movies in Hollywood.
1
Beautifully written, and as haunting as it ought to be. Whatever one's opinion on the wars their country fights, first in our minds should be those who serve(d) and what the impact is on them.
Thank you for sharing, Mr. Gerstel.
37
That has been much of the writing on Vietnam and Iraq . There is little care for the larger victims of the war, the people of those countries who by the millions lost their lives and their families’ futures to these brutal unjustified invasions and its consequences, their soil contaminated with chemicals. All the outrage narrative and research on Agent Orange relates to the folks who dropped it. Laos is littered with American shell casings. There is sorrow for those who were forced to fight and suffer but there is also sorrow for those nations who were on the receiving end of Shock and Awe. No one here has any real idea of the depth and scope of that suffering because for some obvious reason it isn’t so interesting to Americans because the ‘natives’ are only so much dust. The recent Ken Burns PBS series on Vietnam went but a small way to correct that.
47
Thanks Mr. Gerstel. Your essay is a sad, but fitting end to this series.
Each Easter is an exercise in death and resurrection, literally. I packed my bags Good Friday 1969, my parents dropped me at Fort Lewis on Holy Saturday. Easter I waited with other men I knew. Easter Monday morning we boarded a Flying Tigers transport, and headed to the war.
Flying Tigers. Fitting. The airline named for the guys who flew against the Japanese in China before the U.S. was officially in World War II.
Descending into Cam Ranh Bay, near midnight, I watched out the window and gathered simply darkness and lines of tracers disappearing into the black. So much did disappear into it.
When the door opened the jet filled with Vietnam's hot, humid air that we learned to live with. Within two weeks 5 of us who had trained together were in the same infantry company. One of us went home a week later, filled with shrapnel. By the middle of June one was sent to the rear, unfit for combat. Another was lost to disease.
The NVA killed us. Our artillery nearly did. We were strafed once by a Cobra. We killed a new guy in July '69. A day in the field and home in a body bag. I was sent to the rear in May '70 with fever, vomiting, and diarrhea. A few days later a friend was killed by a mortar round, a month short of his tour's end.
A week later I flew home over tracers vanishing into the night. 14 friends killed, 65 wounded.
We'll all be gone and that war will be a country no one any longer inhabits.
90
Thank you for your eloquent story. I have had several similar short encounters over the past few years here in Minnesota, and beginning to realize how more infrequent they are occurring. My dad (WW II, Korea) told me years ago, my "era countdown" would eventually began. Appears it has.
25
Final article in the series about what it all means as America-centric as most of the rest. A lot of good stuff in this series and just as many missed opportunities.
20
We who were never there, whether by intent or by good luck, will never fully understand what it was like for those who were there, by intent or by bad luck.
However, by reading accounts such as these I draw closer to some small understanding that it was worse than I ever imagined.
Mr Gerstel, thank you for sharing this. And thank you for your sacrifices.
73